Dust Particles
by Sarcasm for free
Summary: They always came at night.


They always came at night.

Not every night, but Edith McMichael knew when to expect her visitors. It was a feeling not unlike the flap of a butterfly's wings on her skin that led her to anticipate their arrival.

When Alan had drifted off to sleep, often by way of tonics to settle the dreams and abdominal pains still plaguing him, Edith propped herself up against the headboard of their bed, amidst a sea of cushions, and waited, yet never for long.

All her life she'd thought she would be glad to be rid of horrid illusions and prophetic visions creeping up on her. Nowadays she just hoped to keep _him_ as the sole ghost to call upon her.

He was as mysterious and beautiful as he'd been in life, haunting in more ways than one.

Thomas wavered into existence, bearing the same deathly pallor he'd turned when she'd seen him materialize on the snow-covered hills of Allerdale Hall that fateful day which had been his last among the living. Even so, the white was washed clean, bleached of the rust-colored spots marking the cuts he'd suffered.

_He was absolved of the blood he'd helped spill by proxy_, Edith's fingers yearned to scrawl onto the sheet of paper she kept by her bed, the author in her never resting. How true it was, she didn't know. He never talked. What he did instead, every night he showed himself to her, was to float closer, to incline his head with the gentlemanly air he'd projected even in his most salacious moments, and sat down at her side, hip to hip with his last wife while her new husband slumbered half a mattress away.

He extended his hand, hesitantly, reaching for her face. Never did he bridge the space between them. It was Edith's part in their dance.

Steadily, she placed her fingers on the sharp curve of his cheekbone, to see them flicker into his form, immaterial and see-through, and smiled at him with the tenderness she reserved for these moments.

Maybe he hadn't been completely absolved of his sins, and this was him asking her for forgiveness, time and time again. Or perhaps it was his reward for redeeming himself. He certainly smiled at her like he had been gifted a place in heaven when her hand caressed the cold air of his cheek.

He never stayed long after and went as swiftly and magically as he'd come, stepping away from her bed and involuntary into the line of the bedroom window. In the moonlight, he disintegrated into particles that shone like silver and reminded Edith of the billowing dust she'd blown from the tops of hidden tomes of unsuitable literature she hadn't been able to keep her hands off as a child. Like this, smiling, he drifted, particle for particle, upwards, always upwards, through the ceiling, rattling the chandelier.

If Edith's metaphors, her theories, about Thomas' form and behaviour were any indication of his earned place on the light side of the veil, her second visitor's entrance was evidence of the opposite.

Black as coal, Lucille glided through the parquet, a few inches from the bed, the stench of sulfur trailing in her wake.

Edith didn't welcome her like Thomas (never would, never could). Instead, she fervently hoped, in the deepest, darkest, parts of her heart, that her ideas of white and black, up and down, heaven and hell, were accurate despite their simplicity. But she never feared her. Not like she had in the bloom of Lucille's life.

Ghosts were memories, monuments, and promises. Never had a ghost hurt her. It was the living you had to look out for, she'd learned.

And Lucille Sharpe's ghost certainly never did anything more than look at her. It wasn't pleasant to be stared at by dark hollows full of loathing, but Edith had enough hatred in her to stare back, although enwrought with more sorrow than she might have preferred.

For, even as her guests came on the same nights, they never came together. Not for a single second did the entities of Thomas and Lucille touch.

Edith studied the shadow in front of her sinking back into the ground, down, down, down.

Forgoing the prose bubbling up in her, Edith still gave in, at last, to the thought that completed her musings.

These nights might have been Thomas' reward, but they might as well be Lucille's torment. For all Edith knew, Thomas had no idea of his sister's visits, or did not care for them. He was always the first to come, he dictated which nights to visit Edith – leading as he hadn't been allowed in life.

And Lucille?

Edith reclined back on her pillows, Alan snoring next to her, and contemplated the ceiling Thomas had vanished into.

Lucille was forever chasing the brother and lover she'd lost. Always a moment too late, unable to catch even the edges of the last particles of his being drifting in the air.

It was a penalty crueler than death itself, and if that wasn't hell, Edith couldn't imagine hell at all.


End file.
